Hours after the Englewood Board of Education bucked an angry crowd and voted to move forward with replacing school support staff with workers from private companies, the district was struck by an apparent sickout.

Eight of the district’s 24 secretaries and 40 of its 66 full-time professional assistants called out on Friday morning, according to district officials. More than 100 employees took off work because of illness Friday, including 70 teachers, the district said, but officials would not break down the absences by school.

The district is negotiating a new contract with the teachers union, which also bargains for secretaries and teaching assistants. All three contracts expire at the end of the month.

Half of the absent staff worked at D.A. Quarles Early Childhood Center, officials said, where Lara Szlamkowicz’s 3-year-old daughter attends pre-kindergarten. Szlamkowicz said she was devastated to hear about the board’s decision and the mass absences.

“I decided to stay and be an extra set of hands,” she said. “Everyone is in mourning here. I’ve been crying all day.”

Sharon Vanterpool, the co-president of the union representing the assistants, would not say if she organized or participated in a sickout and declined further comment. “I’m too upset,” she said.

Superintendent Donald Carlisle had little doubt that the large number of absences was a protest against the outsourcing plans.

“This was a reaction to our decision,” he said. “The numbers are too high for me to think otherwise. But life goes on.”

Carlisle said schools were short-handed, but the absences did not affect school activities and business because Friday was the district’s annual Wellness Day.

“All of our kids are outside and this was planned for a year so we are not impacted at all,” he said. “The kids are supervised.”

Szlamkowicz disagreed that Quarles was running smoothly without its support staff.

“There’s not enough adults here,” she said. “Teachers are feeding kids, sweeping floors. I came to the playground and there’s 30 kids with two adults.”

Anita Shemesh, a kindergarten teacher at Quarles and the co-president of the Englewood Teachers Association, said the teachers union did not tell its members to call in sick. She also said the public shouldn’t assume the absences were part of an organized job action, noting that many employees went to Thursday night’s school board meeting, which did not end until midnight and may have been too exhausted to come to work.

“Emotionally, physically, they’ve been traumatized by what just happened,” she said.

Carlisle said if the absences continue next week, the district would ask for medical reasons and bring in substitutes.

School board President Stephen Brown called Friday’s apparent sickout “a shocker” and said he doesn’t understand why the employees would take out their frustration on children.

“Adults can disagree and have different opinions but you can’t put children in between,” he said. “We just ask that they do not use our children as pawns.”

Margaret King, whose 5-year-old son is in kindergarten at Quarles, said the school staff would never do that.

“They love the children as much as we do,” she said. “They’re trying to prove a point.”

Faced with a $4 million budget shortfall, the school board has raised the possibility that all district secretaries and teaching assistants will lose their jobs when their contracts expire.

Those positions would be outsourced for the 2012-13 school year, saving the district $2 million a year in salaries and benefits, officials said. Hundreds of angry city residents and school employees attended Thursday night’s board meeting and blasted the plan before the board voted 8-0 with one abstention to open negotiations with two companies that bid on the contract.

Szlamkowicz said the district previously outsourced the therapists who worked with her daughter, a special-needs student, and she was disappointed with the move to replace the classroom assistants. Her daughter has had three occupational therapists since the school year began.

“She regresses every time because she had to get used to them,” she said. “That’s not how to take care of kids.”

Szlamkowicz said she would be willing to go door to door asking Englewood’s wealthier residents for money if that would help save the school’s professional assistants.

“These people, my God, the kids depend on these people,” she said. “These people are second parents.”

King said her son told her about his missing classroom assistant as soon as she picked him up from school.

“His first comment to me was that his teacher didn’t have any help today,” she said. “He always talks to his assistant. That’s the first person he became attached to.”

Hours after the Englewood Board of Education bucked an angry crowd and voted to move forward with replacing school support staff with workers from private companies, the district was struck by an apparent sickout.

Eight of the district’s 24 secretaries and 40 of its 66 full-time professional assistants called out on Friday morning, according to district officials. More than 100 employees took off work because of illness Friday, including 70 teachers, the district said, but officials would not break down the absences by school.

The district is negotiating a new contract with the teachers union, which also bargains for secretaries and teaching assistants. All three contracts expire at the end of the month.

Half of the absent staff worked at D.A. Quarles Early Childhood Center, officials said, where Lara Szlamkowicz’s 3-year-old daughter attends pre-kindergarten. Szlamkowicz said she was devastated to hear about the board’s decision and the mass absences.

“I decided to stay and be an extra set of hands,” she said. “Everyone is in mourning here. I’ve been crying all day.”

Sharon Vanterpool, the co-president of the union representing the assistants, would not say if she organized or participated in a sickout and declined further comment. “I’m too upset,” she said.

Superintendent Donald Carlisle had little doubt that the large number of absences was a protest against the outsourcing plans.

“This was a reaction to our decision,” he said. “The numbers are too high for me to think otherwise. But life goes on.”

Carlisle said schools were short-handed, but the absences did not affect school activities and business because Friday was the district’s annual Wellness Day.

“All of our kids are outside and this was planned for a year so we are not impacted at all,” he said. “The kids are supervised.”

Szlamkowicz disagreed that Quarles was running smoothly without its support staff.

“There’s not enough adults here,” she said. “Teachers are feeding kids, sweeping floors. I came to the playground and there’s 30 kids with two adults.”

Anita Shemesh, a kindergarten teacher at Quarles and the co-president of the Englewood Teachers Association, said the teachers union did not tell its members to call in sick. She also said the public shouldn’t assume the absences were part of an organized job action, noting that many employees went to Thursday night’s school board meeting, which did not end until midnight and may have been too exhausted to come to work.

“Emotionally, physically, they’ve been traumatized by what just happened,” she said.

Carlisle said if the absences continue next week, the district would ask for medical reasons and bring in substitutes.

School board President Stephen Brown called Friday’s apparent sickout “a shocker” and said he doesn’t understand why the employees would take out their frustration on children.

“Adults can disagree and have different opinions but you can’t put children in between,” he said. “We just ask that they do not use our children as pawns.”

Margaret King, whose 5-year-old son is in kindergarten at Quarles, said the school staff would never do that.

“They love the children as much as we do,” she said. “They’re trying to prove a point.”

Faced with a $4 million budget shortfall, the school board has raised the possibility that all district secretaries and teaching assistants will lose their jobs when their contracts expire.

Those positions would be outsourced for the 2012-13 school year, saving the district $2 million a year in salaries and benefits, officials said. Hundreds of angry city residents and school employees attended Thursday night’s board meeting and blasted the plan before the board voted 8-0 with one abstention to open negotiations with two companies that bid on the contract.

Szlamkowicz said the district previously outsourced the therapists who worked with her daughter, a special-needs student, and she was disappointed with the move to replace the classroom assistants. Her daughter has had three occupational therapists since the school year began.

“She regresses every time because she had to get used to them,” she said. “That’s not how to take care of kids.”

Szlamkowicz said she would be willing to go door to door asking Englewood’s wealthier residents for money if that would help save the school’s professional assistants.

“These people, my God, the kids depend on these people,” she said. “These people are second parents.”

King said her son told her about his missing classroom assistant as soon as she picked him up from school.

“His first comment to me was that his teacher didn’t have any help today,” she said. “He always talks to his assistant. That’s the first person he became attached to.”